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Riyadh denies granting Air India transit rights to Israel

The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has denied reports in the Israeli media claiming that it had granted Air India (AI, Mumbai Int'l) transit rights for its upcoming flights to Tel Aviv.

Citing officials in the Israeli flight industry, the Haaretz daily newspaper said on February 7 that the Indian carrier had been given the greenlight to use Saudi airspace for its 3x weekly Delhi Int'l-Tel Aviv Ben Gurion service due to launch in March.

However, the GACA later refuted the reports telling Al Wasat that no such rights had been granted.

Owing to the Arab economic embargo against Israel, commercial flights bound for the Jewish state are barred from transiting Saudi and other Arab League member states' airspace.

As a result, any eastbound services from Israel to India and Southeast Asia are forced to use more circuitous, and therefore costly, flight routings which involve travel south down the Red Sea, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and then east over the Gulf of Aden/Arabian Sea.

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The Indian government is planning to sell a 100% stake in ground handling firm Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (AIATSL), PTI newswire has reported.

According to an official memorandum published by the government, 98% of shares will be earmarked for sale to a private investor, while the remaining 2% would be distributed to the firm's employees upon the conclusion of the former transaction.

Air India Assets Holding Limited, the government-owned special purpose vehicle managing most of Air India's assets, has issued an agreement in principle for the transaction.

AIATSL is a profitable firm and has posted a INR7.1 billion rupee (USD100 million) net profit for the last full year. It provides ground handling services for nearly 50 airlines, not just Air India.

Last year, the Indian government unsuccessfully tried to divest from Air India and its subsidiaries.

The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has rejected a request by Jet Airways (9W, Mumbai Int'l) to restore extended range twin engined operations certification to B737-8s, The Economic Times has reported. The A320-200neo remains similarly limited.

"We have rejected Jet Airways’ request to relax the Extended Diversion Time Operations (EDTO) limit for Boeing 737 MAX aircraft because we are concerned about the performance of the aircraft, and would like operations to continue with restrictions," a senior DGCA official said.

The authority previously limited both types to operations within 60-minute diversion time, effectively banning their deployment on multiple routes crossing the Bay of Bengal to South-East Asia or the Arabian Sea to the Gulf countries.

The Indian government has resolved to inject INR15 billion rupees (USD211 million) into Air India (AI, Mumbai Int'l) by the end of January 2019, the PTI newswire has reported.

The cash injection is part of a bailout approved by the Indian Parliament at the end of 2018 totalling up to INR23.5 billion rupees (USD330 million). The supplementary grant, as the bailout is referred to by the government, covers only the 2018-19 Financial Year. An unnamed official said that Delhi will not, for now, seek permission to inject further cash into the struggling carrier under the 2019-20 budget.

The current bailout is separate from a ten-year support programme launched in 2012 which covers up to INR302 billion rupees (USD4.2 billion).

As part of the ongoing restructuring, the government has also agreed to transfer INR290 billion rupees (USD4.1 billion) of the carrier's debt to a new special purpose vehicle Air India Asset Holding Company. Air India's total debt stands at around INR550 billion rupees (USD7.7 billion).

The services from Amritsar are likely to commence at the end of March, with the onset of the Summer 2019 season, while the flights from Delhi could then launch in May.

According to the ch-aviation fleets module, SpiceJet currently operates exclusively turboprop and narrowbody fleet consisting of three B737-700s, twenty-seven B737-800s, four B737-900(ER)s, ten B737-8s, and twenty-seven Dash 8-400s. It also operates a single B737-700(F) freighter.

Currently, less than 9% of all services operated by SpiceJet are international. The carrier operates 312 weekly scheduled international flights, predominantly to Dubai Int'l and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi.